The Architecture of Robotics Control Software for Heterogeneous Mobile Robots Network

3. IO ports virtualization 

The problem of integrating heterogeneous mobile robots into a single network also equally requires a separate 

attention. It is often not possible to provide a uniform access method to all mechatronic devices because this requires 

creating the appropriate drivers and loading them into the onboard computer. In this case, the authors used an I/O 

port network visualization system (fig 2): 

 

Fig. 2. IO port virtualization. 

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In this case, "mirrors" of input/output ports are programmatically created on the remote computer (such as the 

developer’s  computer)  with  the  same  features  and  timeouts.  This  allows  you  to  use  proprietary  control  software 

without any networking intention, or to easily integrate it into your own designs. However, this requires additional 

work when creating software drivers for the mechatronic devices since it is necessary to support a transition from a 

port virtualization mode to a command mode and back. This approach resembles the approach to virtualization in 

virtual machines. For example, XEN [3].